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Our Goal

OUR GOAL

To provide a unique environment where folks who have experienced trauma can openly and safely talk. We strive to respect, validate, and learn from each other.

ACHIEVING OUR GOAL

Achieving our goal requires cooperative collaboration amongst members and staff. Members posts remain appropriate and relevant to topics. Terms of Service are clearly posted to help members maintain the dignity of the board. Members of this group are at a stage in their healing to independently regulate their own behavior, as well as keeping themselves safe while on the forums. Staff regularly monitor posts and replies to ensure the board remains a safe and comfortable environment of learning for everyone.

As a friendly and kind community, we validate each other as equally special and significant.

These forums are active and the community not too large or too small - about 400 post per day. There are many forums on different topics. The topics range in subject matter also. You are welcome to interact as you feel comfortable.

This is a safe place for members. We encourage building coping skills, learning from each other and material shared. We discourage sharing explicit memories of past abuse. We feel that processing memories be done with professionals. There are no practicing therapists on these forums. Therefore, topics that call for therapist type responses are discouraged.

Feel free to look around. Realize that, as a guest, your view of the forums is minimal. These forums are otherwise private to the public view and/or search engines.

We have literally hundreds of articles and provide workshops for everyone. Please feel free to email me anytime with questions. I am also providing a tutorial that should help with navigating our site.

This article was recently posted in the American Psychological Association website - Hoax and Reality

This entire article is interesting, but most interesting to read is the section "Hoax and Reality". I have read this book, met and been treated by the author at a hospital for a couple weeks. Note: It is also written by Jeffrey L. Geller, M.D., M.P.H. - who does not, according the the APA, have an agenda.

What is most interesting is that the APA claims that the authors in their articles do not have an agenda - though August Piper is on the board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

I am putting this here, because only professionals can comment to articles at the APA - and, I have been made aware that non-professionals also wanted a place to comment. I am sorry that because of copyright, I can only provide the link and not the entire article for you all.

Colin Ross wrote a response to this article. It's PubMed ID is 19306208 and it is titled "Errors of Logic and Scholarship Concerning Dissociative Identity Disorder". It's ridiculous that they didn't include any of his counter-arguments when his paper is a direct response to Piper, A.; Merskey, H. (2004) (PubMed 15560314), which is where they are pulling most or all of the bullet points from.

His response is summarized thusly on wikipedia, for anyone interested:

"Psychiatrist Colin Ross disagrees with Piper and Merskey's conclusion that DID cannot be accurately diagnosed, pointing to internal consistency between different structured dissociative disorder interviews (including the Dissociative Experiences Scale, Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule and Structured Clinical Interview for Dissociative Disorders)[8] that are in the internal validity range of widely accepted mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. In his opinion, Piper and Merskey are setting the standard of proof higher than they are for other diagnoses. He also asserts that Piper and Merskey have cherry-picked data and not incorporated all relevant scientific literature available, such as independent corroborating evidence of trauma in some patients.[35]"

Quoted from the article/review of the book "The notion that patients can voluntarily keep their alters under control is inconsistent with the trauma-based theory of multiple personality disorder. If patients with multiple personality disorder are able to suppress switching of alters before their therapy begins, Piper asks, why should they fail to be able to do so afterward?"

I have only once heard that someone say he/she can control whether anyone comes out or not. And, that one, I question. This is all such a load of nonsense to put it nicely.